A Critical Review of the Demola Framework and Its Applicability in a Low-Income Economy: A Case Study of The Gambia

Abstract

This paper critically reviews the appropriateness of the Demola Framework for adoption in a low-level income country. According to the World Bank, Low-income countries are developing countries with emerging markets or newly industrialized countries (Abubakar et al., 2019). The Demola framework has been developed and used in some European countries such as Finland, Germany, and Spain as a curriculum delivery approach for entrepreneurship education courses (De Carolis, 2019). The framework has been widely used in bridging the gap between the academia and industry, for example in an impact study conducted in Finland, it was established that due to the frameworks’ responsiveness to building synergies between students and industry, 7 polytechnics and other universities have adopted it as part of their curricula delivery approach (Catalá-Pérez et al., 2020). Based on these, its concepts are being tested in The Gambia, a country in West Africa where for the first time in the tertiary and higher education sector, a new policy decision has been rolled out to embed entrepreneurship training as part of the science, technology, and engineering education programme. This programme forms the first stage of a national development initiative to transform one of the public technical training institutions into a University of Applied Science Engineering and Technology that will be entrepreneurial and will be producing business minded graduates.